Road Warrior: Keep right or pay up even more

If you're one of those daredevils who sails along in the left lane for several miles at 60 or 70 mph or faster, or if you're one of those cautious souls who lumbers along in the middle or left lanes below the speed limit, you might want to rethink your driving habits.

Failing to keep right has long been a violation in New Jersey, but lawmakers have concluded that the $50 to $200 fine hasn't been steep enough to thwart the kind of behavior that tends to cause traffic tie-ups, crashes and road rage. So Governor Christie this week signed a measure that pushes fines to the $100 to $300 range.

"This updated law is, quite simply, a public safety issue and common sense," said the bill's Assembly sponsor, Gilbert "Whip" Wilson, D-Camden.

Maybe so, but many readers have expressed a preference for driving almost exclusively in the left lane for several reasons documented here last month: They avoid trucks which are usually banned from the left lane, and they obviously have no other traffic to their left to worry about. For these folks, staying right — especially the far right — is akin to purgatory.

"It's too slow there," complained one reader.

"By staying left, I don't have to worry about cars entering the highway from my right," said another.

It's hard to dispute these advantages. But thankfully the law doesn't side with bullies who exploit such advantages, and that includes the passive-aggressive bullies who keep left below the speed limit and refuse to move over — a practice that encourages everybody else to pass them on the right, a maneuver that frequently leads to crashes, near-misses and road rage.

"Some justify staying left by insisting they're going the speed limit," said Bergenfield's Rich Pedersen, a traffic-accident reconstructionist. "But this slows up traffic. If a driver can move to the right, he should do so regardless of his speed. He shouldn't be selfish."

High school driving instructors always emphasize this "keep right, pass left strategy" because it encourages the one safety element too often missing on American roadways: driving discipline. The formal term for it is "mode separation," which simply means separating slow drivers from faster drivers.

If this sounds like heresy because it might encourage drivers in the far left lane to exceed the speed limit, tell it to the Europeans. By all accounts, the rules there encourage trucks and slow cars to stay right, and drivers tend to stick to the rules for the common good. Lane changes and weaving are reduced. Faster drivers tend to speed a bit. And everybody else can worry a bit less about a truck veering into the slower lane.

For example, if someone in Italy is driving in the fast lane and a faster driver approaches from the rear, he'll usually flash his lights — a maneuver that's considered an established protocol: a request to move over that rarely goes unfulfilled. In New Jersey, many consider that a declaration of war.

Here are a few questions about the new penalties that keep cropping up:

Q. What are the main exceptions for failing to stay right?

As under the old law, a driver must keep right except to overtake another vehicle or in preparation for a left turn.

Q. If we all stayed right, wouldn't that amount to poorly utilizing the left lane?

I've heard no formal complaints about police enforcing this law in high-volume traffic.

Q. Isn't this increase simply a way to raise money?

Be your own judge after doing the math. More than 4,000 tickets were issued for this violation in New Jersey last year. At an average $60 per summons, the failing-to-stay-right law might have yielded $240,000, a figure that could easily double under the new penalties. It's hardly a windfall, though, once this extra revenue is distributed to the state, 21 counties and more than 500 municipalities. The new law also imposes a $50 surcharge for signage, perhaps a $200,000 bonus designed to erect warnings about driving laws. If only a few deaths and injuries were prevented this way, might it be worth the cost?